Usage-based payment systems are becoming increasingly common, but a recent variation in disaster recovery has an interesting twist. A new pricing model from a company called Asigra is based not on how much data an organisation backs up, but how much it restores. In particular, a ‘recovery performance score’ determines the amount of money a customer will pay. The Asigra system emphasises value rather than cost: the value is in the data restored, rather than the data saved. Is a similar pricing model likely to spread to related services such as DraaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service)?
DraaS addresses requirements for disaster recovery planning in organisations that do not have enough (or any) in-house DRP resources. It also provides a solution that is put in place and tested offsite: if the client organisation suffers a disaster even to the extent of closing down the organisation’s business, the offsite third party team still has a chance of restarting the organisation’s activities. Disaster recovery planning is also work that human beings need to do. Until such time as a menu-driven automated system exists to build individual DR plans from predefined modules, such work may need to be paid for up-front.
While value- or success-based fees may be a difficult thing to put into place, legal claims for damage because of inadequate DR planning are less so. In a blog on litigation and related matters (tip 6), Karim Mohamed discusses the need for appropriate risk management and the existence of a disaster recovery plan to avoid such situations. The author includes a quote from the insurance industry that often organisations find themselves in delicate legal situations because of administrative errors, rather than lack of legal knowledge. Human intervention or at a minimum human checking is still required. And the penalties for failure are clearer than the rewards for success, but that is a common characteristic of business in general.